Let Us Prey [FICTOID]

“Countess, are you on drugs again?”

“’Again’ implies I was once off drugs.”

“Point taken.  Let me rephrase that:  Are you stoned right now?”

“…possibly…”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Without confirming or denying, what leads you to suspect I’m stoned?”

“Two things:  First, this riddle you’re obsessed with.”

“It’s a very fine riddle to be obsessed with.”

“’Why is a hospital like a praying mantis?’”

“Yes!  Precisely!  Why is a hospital like a preying mantis.”

“Praying.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, read your previous line.  You said ‘preying’.  Now, I grant you far too many religious organizations are predatory against their adherents, but there’s a difference between ‘praying’ and ‘preying’.  The former is an act of religious devotion, the latter is an act of aggression against a victim.”

“Why would anyone call them praying mantises?”  To the best of my knowledge they’re not religious.  Preying mantis is a better name because they prey on their…uh…prey.

“And their husbands, let’s not forget that.  Lop off their little buggy heads and gobble them up, yum!”

“I can see the argument for the latter, but they’re called praying mantises because their claws are folded to look like they’re praying.”

“I don’t pray like that.  When I pray I strip naked and paint myself blue.”

“Ironically, that’s the way some people prey.  But nonetheless, the rest of the world calls them praying mantises.”

“Then the rest of the world is wrong.”

“Have you ever seen a hospital with a mate, much less a mate it decapitated and cannibalized?”

“…no…”

“Then how can a hospital be praying?”

“Ah!  By your own logic, hospitals don’t pray, either!”

“Hospitals have doctors and medical staff, and doctors have long known only three things can happen to a patient:  They get better, they stay the same, or they get worse.

“In the first case, if the patient gets better, the doctor takes the credit.  In the second, the doctor claims to have stabilized them and again takes the credit.  In the last case, they say it was hopeless and there was nothing they could do.

“Same with priests and prayer -- “

“Not all religions have priests.”

“They all have spiritual leaders of some sort which we will refer to as priests.  Stop trying to derail the conversation.

“If you get what you pray for, the priest says it’s divine will and ask for an offering.  If things stay the same, priests say you aren’t praying hard enough and ask for an offering.  If things get worse, they claim you’re a sinner in dire need of repentance and ask for an even larger donation.  See the similarity?”

“Without conceding the point, yes, I grasp the logic behind your argument.

“But you said there were two things that tipped you off I was stoned.  What is the second?”

“Well, you’re naked and painted blue…”

© Buzz Dixon